Dedicate v. 1. To set apart for a special use. 2 To commit (oneself) to a course of action. 3. To address or inscribe (e.g., a literary work) to someone. (Webster’s II New Riverside Dictionary, 2nd ed.)

Don’t you feel it in the air? Spring possibilities are about to cede to summer pleasures. I’ve been ruminating on the importance of spring cleaning for your creating life and have covered the first two steps—reassessment and reorganization. The third step is the most powerful one—rededication. To rededicate ourselves to something we deem as special in our lives strengthens and amplifies our commitment.

Rededicating ourselves to our creative life sends a joyful message to our ‘Creative Self’. Our Creative Self loves to be wooed. Its language includes ritual, ceremony and demonstrative acts of appreciation.

What aspects of the creative life would you like to rededicate yourself to as you move into summer’s rhythms?

Here are some to consider:

I rededicate myself to uplifting and amplifying other writers.

I rededicate myself to patience and persistence in claiming a creative life.

I rededicate myself to owning my creative impulses, even in the face of naysayers and saboteurs.

I rededicate myself to knowing that my creative work will matter to someone, so I must finish it.

I rededicate myself to curtailing the diet of my inner critics, who feed on fear, and instead nourish my Creative Self with periods of rest and play.

Woo-hoo! I feel very lucky that Book Smugglers has a practice of inviting their authors to give feedback on the covers. They don’t have to do that and many presses don’t. Like with the Reenu-You cover, I gave them some suggestions which they relayed to the artist.

We all went back and forth, trading ideas. This is the one of many pleasures in working with a small press. They work with superb visual artists and build in time for these kinds of conversations. I also trust Book Smugglers to know what kinds of covers sells books and engages readers.

I absolutely love the Nussia cover and enjoyed the collaborative process it took to produce it.

Desire for an idea is like bait. You’re fishing, you have to have patience. You bait your hook, and then you wait. The desire is the bait that pulls those fish in—-those ideas. David Lynch

Summer is almost upon us. Last month, I began a series on spring cleaning for your creative life. There are three steps in the process:

1) You reassess your space, your schedule, and patterns of mind to see what is supporting or not supporting your creative life.
2) You reorganize your space, schedule, and patterns of minds to allow you to create with more ease.
3) After reassessing and reorganizing, you rededicate yourself to having a productive and joyful creative life!

If you’ve spent some time reassessing your space, schedule and patterns of mind, in connection to your creative life, then you should be in great shape for the next step which is reorganizing.

Reorganizing is an essential component of this process. And, this is where we can get stuck very quickly. In dealing with physical reorganization, if we don’t plan carefully, we’ll leave lots of stuff just laying around.

We actually have to combine intention with action to yield results.

Besides thinking of what’s working or not working in your physical space, you might also want to evaluate how and when you schedule your creative work. Really, it’s about having a creative rhythm. The word schedule conjures up the endless to-do-list.

Spring and then summer usually bring new rhythms into our life that can support our creativity. We are often making time for fun travel, to being outside more, and to taking much needed breaks and naps. All of this can be used in service of establishing a different creative rhythm.

How can we reorganize our schedule to take advantage of this energy? How do we cultivate the patience and spaciousness of mind so that we catch those wonderful ideas that David Lynch refers to?

Here are some easy tips:
-Move your practice outside for some of this season. If your tendency is always to be tucked away in a home office, take opportunities to write at the beach, at the lake, or at a state park.

-Take more advantage of the longer periods of light this season. Can you rise an hour earlier to shoot your photographs or try writing later in the day during the season’s glorious sunsets?

-Keep an idea journal. This is a place for all your ideas as they bubble up. Give yourself lots of permission to allow this idea journal to be filled with musings that delight you. Don’t put any pressure on yourself to turn these ideas into ones that have to ‘become something’. The idea journal should be a place to have fun and play.

I’m thrilled that Book Smugglers has released a sneak peek of the new cover for “Nussia”, my sci-fi short story that will be published by them at the end of the month. It will be featured in their Awakenings series this summer.

Always believe in your work! Sometimes you’re ahead of the market or trends.

I wrote this story years ago and couldn’t place it. Over many years, I kept honing it and believing in it. I’m so glad it has found a home!

“Nussia” is set in the late 1970s and in many ways, it’s my anti-ET story.

Lindsay, an African American girl “wins” an extraterrestrial in a national contest only to find her family’s life upended. It’s E.T. meets Fatal Attraction.

As I have mentioned a few times here, one of my WIPs is a mystery (draft written during 2014 NaNoWriMo), and sustainable fashion plays a prominent role in it. Researching sustainable fashion (also called eco-fashion) has made a deep impact on my consumer sensibilities.

Over the past several years, I’ve been more mindful of the clothing and footwear choices I am making.

One of my constant dilemmas in trying to be more conscious about fashion and waste has been thinking about shoes and how to keep them viable over a long time.

Shoe waste is as much of a problem as garments that are disposed of after being worn just a few times. Shoes often end up in landfills and have many chemicals in them from the shoe manufacturing process that can last in a landfill for hundreds of years.

I’m the type of person that when I love a pair of shoes, I really LOVE them and will wear them as long as I can and get them fixed over and over again.

Although I have been reading a ton about how to “upcycle” clothes, I have yet to try any major design projects. I have been wanting to start somewhere. I’m curious about modifying clothes not just for myself, but also so that I might incorporate insights into the novel.

These ballet flats are ones that I love, but you can see that the glittery surface has eroded. There’s nothing that my cobbler could do for these shoes (maybe if I lived in a bigger city, I’d have more options). I thought these would make a perfect upcycling project.

I am not a crafty person mind you, so I had a bit of trepidation about this project. Still, I was determined to try. I took a trip to a local craft store, talked to one of the very helpful cashiers and got busy.

I bought three items: blue glitter, an adhesive and a glitter sealer. This cost about $20.

First comes the masking of the shoes.

Then I assembled my items.

I proceeded with care. Here they are after I added the glitter. I think I did a good job of choosing a close approximation of the kind of glitter that was on the original. And, I like how this deep royal blue color pops.

Glitter really does get everywhere! Next time I will use even more paper under the shoes.
And, here is the the final product! They are pretty sparkly. I’m excited to wear these shoes.

I took them with me on my cruise, but didn’t get a chance to wear them.
My sense of accomplishment is pretty high. And, I’m glad that these shoes didn’t end up in a landfill. And, the best thing is that if the glitter wears off (which it will in time), I can just repeat this process. Not bad for a $20 investment. Not quite sure how I will use this knowledge in my WIP right this moment, but I am tucking it away for when I can pop it in.

Interested in learning more about recycling your shoes instead of just throwing them away? Check out this link

Last week, I was away at sea, on a cruise, so I wasn’t able to post. This trip was the kickoff to my upcoming 50th birthday and there is LOTS to tell about that (I got to visit Cuba!). I will share my reflections SOON.

Today, I wanted to follow-up on ridding ourselves (or at least examining) unhelpful patterns of mind as part of my Spring Cleaning and the Creative Life series. My last post was on fear and there is *always* more to say about this topic.

Four years ago, I wrote a poem about fear and its presence in my creative life. Four years ago, I held a big creativity summit online with renowned coaches and writers. I went on a roller coaster learning curve and at times it was painful. Four years ago, I was also submitting my work like crazy and getting poems published and placing in contests. Inevitably, as we grow bigger, we often have to deal with our fears that come wrapped in new clothes. This was true for me in 2014. Looking back now, I can see that my creative growth triggered a powerful fear attack. If I hadn’t pushed through it, I might have stopped on my creative journey and never made it to this amazing time in my creative life.

It is really powerful to use four years as a marker on your creative path. Amazing podcaster and writer, Joanna Penn wrote an excellent post on using the Olympics as a way to think about what one can achieve in just 4 short years. Check it out, I think you’ll find it inspiring:

Here is the post I wrote in 2014 (almost exactly four years ago) that explores how to handle a fear attack:

As a coach, I have found that the number one thing that stops most people from pursuing their deepest and most meaningful heart’s desire is fear. Fear comes in a variety of forms, shapes and personas including ‘what will they think’, ‘I’m not good enough’, ‘I’ll never make money doing what I love’, ‘I need more credentials’, and ‘what if they don’t like what I create’, etc.

None of us are immune from feeling fear, especially when we’re moving outside out comfort zone. The danger is that fear with its tricky (and sometimes believable) tunes of gloom will get the best of us and immobilize us for far too long. I’ve had my own run-ins with fear over the years. What follows below is an impromptu ‘talking back’ that I recently gave to fear.

When you’re in the grip of a fear attack, it might be fun to write a poem/letter/manifesto to your fear and finish the lines ‘I’ve lived through….’

I am looking you, FEAR, straight in the eye

I am looking you, FEAR, straight in the eye
How dare you try to intimidate me!
Do you know what I’ve lived through?

I’ve lived through being a battered woman’s child
I’ve lived through being an abused young woman
I’ve lived through poverty
I’ve lived through being almost homeless
I’ve lived through discrimination
I’ve through academe
I’ve lived through the vagaries of a creative life

What else do you think you can do to ME?

How dare you sit there!

How dare you, FEAR!

How DARE you, FEAR!

So what if they laugh? I’m supposed to be worried if the unspecified THEY laugh?

What do you mean?

THEY have laughed before, so I imagine that they’ll laugh again

How dare you trying to make me afraid!

for asking for more
for wanting more
for trying more
for talking more
for being seen more
for saying I deserve more
for desiring more

How are dare you, FEAR!

Here’s what I want you to know, FEAR

Your days are numbered

I’m cleaning house in 2014

You better get in line

Or, I will strip you down into the dysfunctional four letter thing that you are

When fears are attended to, it clears the way for clear and simple writing that comes from your heart. Even the briefest attention can melt fear.
-Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy, author

Last week, I began a series about spring cleaning for your creative life.

There are three steps in the process:

1) You reassess your space, your schedule, and patterns of mind to see what is supporting or not supporting your creative life.

2) You reorganize your space, schedule, and patterns of minds to allow you to create with more ease.

3) After reassessing and reorganizing, you rededicate yourself to having a productive and joyful creative life!

Reassessing your physical space is a great place to start because it is visible and you spend a lot of time there. Another thing to reassess during spring cleaning are your ‘patterns of mind’. By this I mean, the habitual ways of thinking and responding to your creative life.

One powerful pattern of mind is fear.

Fear can show up in so many ways in a creator’s life. We fear to write, draw, and sing badly, we fear rejection, we fear we won’t reach our potential, we often fear the blank page, canvas, music studio, etc. Fear often causes us to procrastinate.

Fear looks like not following through when an editor asks you to send them new work.

Fear looks like talking yourself out of registering for that art class that you’ve been dreaming about.

Fear looks like spending more time listening to writing podcasts than taking time to write.

One thing that helps is acknowledging and tracking our fears. One great way to do this is by keeping a fear journal.

In 2015, I had the good fortune of meeting the writer Daisy Hernandez, author of the incredible memoir, ACup of Water under My Bed. During a talk she gave to my upper division ‘women and creativity’ seminar, she said that keeping a ‘fear journal’ has been helpful to her writing process. She explained that a fear journal is where she lists her fears that come to her as she begins writing (or even after she’s finished). So, while she works, she has her fear journal open on her desk. Sometimes she’ll write ‘Still afraid’, or she’ll name a fear specific to the project that she is working on.

What I love about this concept is that it acknowledges that writers tend to have lots of fears while writing and that it is powerful to capture them in one place. Fear is a normal part of the writing experience. Writing it down allows us to have some distance from the feelings that the fears evoke. A fear journal helps us to see the ebb and flow of our worries and concerns.

Fears never go completely away, but by employing self-reflective exercises, they don’t have to immobilize us.

Do you have a pattern of mind that needs some attending to during spring cleaning?